Here are another 2 photos.



Thanks to TimmyA for that advice , yes it does work.I did not record the voltage as yet.

haha... Ok... Funny story that one...

What sort of car is it? Do you have a high series instrument cluster with the boot ajar indicator? This happened to me when i installed my high series cluster...

Now the circuit is as such: you have a constant power supply to the green/red wire to the led's... The other wire which is is white runs up an into the boot latch... When you pop the boot it shorts this wire to earth which brings the light on... When you close it the earth is broken and the light goes out... That is the 'simple' circuit of the boot light if you follow?

Now when you have a high series cluster it taps into that white wire for its ajar indication and it is looking for voltage... So when the white wire is grounded (boot open) there is zero volts on the wire and the ajar light comes on... When you close the boot the is broken on this wire and you have an open circuit... And despite this wire being after the led strip, it goes from zero volts to around 9 or 10 due to the impedance of the led and the cluster... Gives you a boot closed indicator...

Now you have a circuit again... The latch switch is opened so no earth there... But you have a circuit from power, through the led, through the white wire, through the cluster, to earth... And this circuit exists with the festoon bulb too... The difference being that you might only have a couple of hundred milliamps flowing... This is enough to light the led, but not the incandescent bulb... This just shows how little current it takes to make an led work compared to the old power hungry filament... Either way, with either lamp, the battery is still going flat at the same rate... Just with the bulb people don't realise it...

if you watch the led's through the back seat and pop the boot you'll see them get brighter as they'll have the full 12 volt across them instead of the 3 (12 minus the 9 on the white wire) you measured previously... Again put the festoon in and measure the voltage on the other wire... Still bet you have around the 9 mark meaning the bulb is getting 3 volts...

Now the fix is lifting the white wire to 12v instead of the 9 or 10 it currently gets to...
To do this... You need to add a resistor between power and the white wire... Which in essence is just between the two wires that feed the light... If you bare a bit back on both wires so you can try some different values of resistor... Make sure the wires don't short to each other of the body... Close the boot and stick your head in through the back seat... Try a 10k ohm first... We use these for this function in circuits... If it doesn't work (led still glows) you need less resistance... I can't remember what size i used now... And without knowing the resistance inside the cluster it makes it hard to work out...

Now take a quarter watt resistor with 12 volts across it, to get full load is 580 ohms... As such i wouldn't want to go any lower than probably 2k ohm... Otherwise you're heating the resistor and will burn it out...

Try 10k 9k 8k etc... Just work your way down till you have success... Wish i could remember what i used... Was probably 10k... But just not quite sure...

Hope that makes sense... Tried to explain the theory behind it anyway...

Cheers,
tim